by Simon Jones | Nov 30, 2018 | Business Strategy, Content Marketing, Marketing Online, Traffic Generation
If your content doesn’t resonate with the right audience, or if your ideal clients aren’t enticed by your offering, it’s time to develop a content marketing strategy or review your existing content strategy. There’s truth in the saying that without strategy, execution is useless. Even though 91% of Australian marketers employ content as a marketing tool, only 46% of them say their organisation has a documented content strategy in place to manage it as a business asset. To get the most out of your content investment, a solid content strategy could be exactly what you need to turn things around. What is a content strategy? A content or ‘content marketing’ strategy focuses on four key steps: strategising, planning, implementing and reviewing. This type of strategy encapsulates the entire content cycle – the who, what, when, how and why – in order to identify the right audiences, perfect your brand messaging and ultimately create high-quality content that will generate quantifiable results. A strategy can be developed in-house if you have the expertise, but it’s a task often outsourced to a content marketing agency, where an experienced content strategist can manage the project. If your current approach isn’t based on a sound strategy, here are 3 ways it could be costing you a fortune. 1. You’re throwing money at PPC PPC (pay-per-click) marketing is essentially a way to ‘buy’ visits to your site rather than generating visits organically. It’s one form of search engine advertising, where you bid for ad placements in a search engine like Google’s sponsored links. Thanks to its simplicity, it’s highly popular. However, this simplicity can be a... 
by Andrew Shaw | Nov 19, 2018 | Business Strategy, Content Marketing, Marketing Online
Have you ever clicked off a video because the presenter just seemed too fidgety? Too wooden? Too arrogant? Too timid? Video presentation is a great skill to learn, especially if you’re an executive or a business owner. Your manner, how you speak and how you dress are examined minutely, much more so than in real life. That’s because viewers are accustomed to watching professional actors and TV presenters, so they have high expectations of anyone who appears on their smartphone or TV screens. Whether you’re creating your videos for content marketing or training purposes, here are 4 tips to help you become a confident presenter. You are what you wear First impressions count for a lot, and are based on appearance. Even before you open your mouth, some people have made up their minds about you. The trick is to simply be yourself. Wear what you would normally wear when meeting with a client, not what you would wear to a special occasion. If the head of a not-for-profit organisation appears in a Chanel suit and pearl necklace, it might raise questions about her organisation’s priorities. (If you’re the editor of Vogue, it’s a different story.) Avoid wearing fabric with tight patterns, especially stripes and checks. Through the magic of television, these can cause a weird optical effect called a moiré pattern, where the fabric appears to ripple when you move. Don’t buy anything new for the video presentation – wear something familiar. You don’t want to discover that your new jacket is too tight around the chest just as you step in front of the camera. Speaking tips... 
by Simon Jones | Nov 6, 2018 | Business Strategy, Business Website Help, Marketing Online
Business owners can no longer ignore the need to have a user-friendly, optimised website, and quality content – at least, not if they want to convert website visitors into customers and remain competitive. Yet every year we hear about startups failing to gain traction despite an innovative product and strong financial backing. And major corporations aren’t immune either. After failing to leverage the power of e-commerce in its early days, it was only last year that stuttering Toys ‘R’ Us announced a plan to revamp its website – part of a $100 million e-commerce strategy. But you might remember how that panned out. For many businesses, the website is often the first interaction a prospective client has with the brand. And it doesn’t matter what you sell – B2B or B2C, products or services – your ultimate goal is to convert the ‘potentials’ visiting your website into customers. If you aren’t converting visitors into customers, or views to sales, asking why should be a priority. Could it be something as simple as… You’re attracting (or targeting) the wrong audience This could be for any number of reasons. Does your website address issues more likely to interest small business, when your ideal clients are medium and large businesses? Are you building a young Instagram and Snapchat audience when your offering is more attractive to baby boomers? Setting up Google Analytics properly can provide valuable insights on your website visitors – their age, location, how they found your site, how long they stayed, the number of pages they visited. From there you can tweak your content or reconsider publishing platforms to... 
by Tess Oliver | Feb 27, 2017 | Business Website Help, Content Marketing, Marketing Online, Small Business
There’s now a plethora of online tools out there that can make running your business and your content marketing and promotion efforts so much easier. Best of all, many of these offer free versions, or free trials on their paid options. They can be very handy for businesses without the budget to outsource to a content marketing agency. In pre-internet days, content marketing was often an expensive exercise, involving printed brochures and catalogues, direct selling, or TV, radio and print advertising. It was also largely hard to measure, which meant it could be very hit-and-miss. American department store pioneer John Wanamaker, who is credited with printing the first copyright store advertisement in 1874, is famously quoted as saying that half of his advertising spend was wasted, but he wasn’t sure which half! Some of the tools we’ve singled out not only make content marketing easier and cheaper, but infinitely more measurable, so you can avoid wasting time, money and effort on content strategies that aren’t working. Read on to find out more about 10 free tools you should consider using in your business. GoSpaces – free e-commerce website building Shopify’s GoSpaces app enables fledgling e-commerce businesses to build an online store for free. Once you join up, you are provided with a generic website template which you can alter to suit your business by adding your own content, images, and products. The platform also comes with multilingual (up to 20 languages) and multi-currency support, and a shopping cart support service. It is free to set up and use until you reach sales of $50 per month, after which there... 
by Leonie Seysan | Jan 3, 2017 | Blog Writing, Business Strategy, Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Online
Heading into the New Year with a resolution to step up your marketing efforts? If you didn’t get the results you wanted in 2016, here’s a quick checklist you can use to identify weak spots in your content marketing. Assuming you’ve made some effort to publish content during 2016, here are the four top mistakes we see that diminish the results: 1. Putting Little Effort into Content Creation With so much content online, if you’re not making a big effort to create content that hits home with your audience, you might be wasting your time creating content at all. Short shallow articles that state the obvious won’t hold audience attention even if a catchy headline entices people to click through to read it. And what’s the point of attracting visitors to your website or LinkedIn article if they’re going to roll their eyes and click the back button? The bad news: good content takes time and effort to create. The good news: even one or two excellent articles a month, properly promoted on social channels, can increase your audience, and help you connect with prospective clients. If your team can’t devote the time, there are content writing services who will be happy to help! 2. Failing to promote content on social media Many business owners believe that simply publishing regularly on their blog will drive additional traffic to their websites and deliver extra business. If you undertake your keyword research and publish well optimised posts, you might indeed garner some extra traffic to your website. But you’ll bring in more if you’re drawing people’s attention to your content via social... 
by Leonie Seysan | Oct 26, 2016 | Business Strategy, Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Online
So, you’ve developed a content marketing strategy your competitors would envy, but will you be able to carry it out? Creating a content strategy or an inbound marketing plan will provide a solid direction, but it’s what comes next – planning your content – that will determine how well you implement. If you don’t have a comprehensive plan, don’t jump in an attempt immediate implementation. Your strategy is only the what and why. Now you’ll need to plan the who and how. It’s this planning phase that will allow you to streamline your activities for the best chance of consistent implementation. Perhaps your strategy involves: Researching to ensure you choose topics of greatest interest to your buyer personas Publishing high quality content consistently Optimising your content for discoverability Being highly active on the social media channels most relevant to you Curating outstanding content your audience will appreciate Regularly repurposing your own content assets into eBooks or other material Here is a breakdown of some of the tasks involved to help you decide on the who and how for your content plan. Topic and keyword research – taking the time to undertake keyword research not only helps you identify popular search terms and long tail keywords with potential, it helps to identify the type of information your prospective clients are looking for. The person most suitable for this task might be your content strategist, or any other team member from a writer to a marketing assistant who has a thorough understanding of your audience, and familiarity with the tools used to undertake keyword research. Writing – there are several potential solutions for...